#sobbed my way through this one

[alwaysthequietones]

I found you.

[dwellsinthebog]

people are sleeping on post-canon laios and mithrun. man who feels no desire and man whose desire can never be fulfilled? the stories write themselves...

[corpsentry]

eulogy

[mechazushi]

Kafka Hibino

Kafka Hibino.... with visible salt and pepper side burns.

Kafka Hibino.... wearing glasses and has salt and pepper side burns.

Kafka HIbino.... in that black turtleneck and a dark brown leather jacket and also wearing glasses and has salt and pepper side burns.

Kafka Hibino.... wearing that outfit and is an Animal Biology Professor in an College Au.

Kafka Hibino..... asking out Hoshina who is an Advanced Mathematics Professor working at the same college, to have an after-work drink with him.

Slightly DRUNK Kafka Hibino... becoming very forward with an also slightly drunk Hoshina

Slightly Drunk Hoshina... immediately matching Kafka's freak tenfold and Kafka is very much fine with this.

[sunsetsandsunshine]

Actually don’t fucking talk to me... @ziipzeepzop-eez

[eerna]

the effect of first time hearing the chorus joins Orpheus in Epic III is the closest humanity has gotten to magic

[alluralater]

hey everyone, i won’t be as active for a while. got home last night super late after being on the road for 20 some odd hours. dealing with some family things and as an older sister, my priority of taking care of my siblings comes first before anything else. being on here is amazing for me but i don’t think i’ll have much time for it. reminder to please treat those in your life who are battling addiction with patience and care. i lost my older brother (sweetest person i’ve ever known and he remained that way up until his last night) to suicide and alcoholism, trauma and ptsd, depression and his feelings of hopelessness. talk with the people you care about. another of my siblings is dealing with the same and i refuse to let it escalate to such a terrifying end twice in less than a fucking year. remind the people you care about that there are beautiful things to live for. show them kindness and love. there is all kinds of misinformation out there but know this, you can make a difference for someone. don’t let them suffer in silence.

[simcardiac-arrested]

i am in some sort of bug hell

[feroluce]

No wait!! What was Gepard's second letter?!?!

One was business but the contents of the second weren't mentioned, is this a secret jus for them? T-T

Absolutely adore your writing btw. My heart broke with the first part and I am on cloud 9 with how the second part ended!!! <3

((The context: Lucid Dreamer ficlet part 1 and part 2))

His second letter was personal, give the man some privacy, Anon!!

If you want an actual answer though haha, I've decided it's best left to the imagination. Like I think it would be actively detrimental to the story if I wrote it out word for word. Sometimes part of writing is knowing what to flesh out and what to not.

I don't think it would be a confession, though.

I think Sampo has a hilariously hard time laying himself bare, even though he LOVES getting attention from Gepard. For being a personal letter, it probably doesn't get TOO personal, and the only reason Sampo would leave such a thing behind for him at all is on the off chance he'll never see him again. I think it would take a pretty extreme circumstance, like death, to make Sampo be honest. But then, what does honesty matter at that point? Is it worth it, will it only make it worse? Does it change anything? Sampo will still be dead and gone. Gepard will still be left behind. Does Sampo want Gepard to know anything? I'm not sure he would.

(That said, it does make for a good scene, doesn't it? Gepard pokes through the safehouse, and he finds the beat up metal box, full of letters. He sees one with his name. And he slowly sinks onto the bed, carefully pulls it open.

The letter is still never shown. But it's not the words that are important.

It's the way that Gepard holds it tight between his fingers, realizes that he's creasing the paper, then urgently smooths it out again. It's the way that every successive sentence makes his breath stutter. It's the way he gets to the end of the page and is suddenly so, so exhausted that he sits curled over the letter, heart too heavy to hold until it's unbearable weight bowed his back.

And finally, Gepard drags himself up. Sighs all the air out of his lungs. He grabs the box, and he makes his solitary march back to Belobog.)

((When he returns, he reports straight to Bronya, and shows her what he found. Bronya notices that there's only one letter in there with Gepard's name, one with nothing but detailed instructions, and she elects not to say anything. She doesn't want to rub salt in the wound, especially not one so fresh.

She completely misses that Gepard has kept the second letter separate, tucked away in his armored coat, in the inside pocket against his chest.))

[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or not cause I haven't been in the lacey games fandom for long, but I think out of the four videos Lacey's Wardrobe is by FAR the scariest to me cause holy shit

[l1li4n]

rain always makes me think of brocedes

[definitelynotshouting]

Can I ask, since you mentioned agreeing 'even if under duress' - how did the Watchers convince Player Grian to join them in hunger au?

So take this with the specific grain of salt that ive never watched Evo directly (but have friends who have ((thank you wren)), so i know tidbits via osmosis from them), but my thought has always been that the riddles the Watchers gave the Evo Players were all tests used to measure cleverness and intelligence-- the whole point of them attempting to copy the mind of a Player into a Watcher larva in the first place was to try and avoid the insanely high infant mortality rate their typical juveniles go through, bc they dont understand their own limits enough to even know they have them yet. So they needed a Player they knew they could instruct and who would listen to them, and, well. Grian, for all he was rebellious and outright defiant of the Watchers, still solved their puzzles and only had to be punished once before he stopped trying to mess with them

What ive always pictured is after the dragon fight the two main elders of the Watcher colony finally revealed themselves to Grian properly-- i have this crystal clear image of the two of them hovering above and next to the central end island, looming over Grian, and like, these guys are big. HUGE. A good 5x bigger than the ender dragon itself, at LEAST. It would be hard not to feel insanely intimidated by that, honestly, especially when there are two of them side by side, blocking your entire view of the End from that direction.

Anyway picture that with the context of these two giant floating winged worms youve never seen before, who have demonstrated their powerful ability to manipulate code in a way you cant.... telling you that they have chosen you to become one of them. Thats an immense amount of pressure, both from flattery and fear, especially considering theyve punished you before for defying them. I like to think even then, Grian balked a bit, and while i dont have exact dialogue beats here, i know the Watchers continued putting that pressure on him (likely while leveraging his friendships too-- like ive always said, if Grian hadnt been chosen, BigB wouldve been, and i can absolutely see the Watchers offering to take him in Grian's stead) until he finally caved and accepted their "offer" of joining them.

Unfortunately, he didnt find out exactly what that entailed until it was far too late.

[zhouxiangs]

+ a few minutes later

[icewindandboringhorror]

There's always a slight yearning in the back of my mind wishing I had been born in the right place, time, family situation, income level, etc. to have just lived in one single house for my entire life. Imagine being born in a place that still suits you, even through all of your personal evolutions and etc. The idea of deep familiarity with an area because you've lived and explored it for 40+ years, being encased in a web of memories and connections. Being able to clean out your old childhood bedroom and find personal artifacts, to dig in the yard and remember. I know those lives can still be plenty imperfect, but there's just something so seemingly solid and stable and Grounding about it that I sometimes wish I could have.. (At least from my outside perspective as someone who's moved around a bit geographically and even within the same area, never lives in the same house/ apartment /etc. for more than a few years usually.) Like... having a place that is printed upon, fully your own, rather than chronically a visitor, every thought of a space always tempered with the notion that one day soon you'll have to pack it all up again, etc. There's something peaceful about the permanence.

[dynamitekansai]

The academic debate for the ages continues.

[carefulfears]

what do you consider the heart of californication? like really carries through the series & makes it compelling

thank you for this question, i really love it. to me, it's a number of things, starting with that the show cares deeply about hank and takes him seriously in a way that the culture doesn't. in a way, yes, he's their dog and pony show with the funny one-liners and the salacious pull. but the arc of the series is unequivocally aligned with him and his desires and his needs and his values.

hank wants to be with his family, wants to be better for them, wants to not let them down- and the show needs him to fail at all of those things. for the dog and pony of it all, for their viewership and for their thesis and for the food in their mouths, but it simultaneously feels bad that he is failing. simultaneously knows that this isn't what he wants, and that it's sad. and it can be as simple as a dream sequence or a look or a quiet final scene, but every single episode is ultimately going to remind you that everything you're laughing at is a loss.

which, like i said at the top, speaks to a level of respect that the show had for the character that is just gone in discussions of the series. they take the time to recognize that he is missing something. he is losing something and he is without everything that means anything to him, this is the cost. equally important, duchovny respects that character and understands the same.

i was listening to an interview last night (trish you heard this) where he was speaking with some podcast dudebros and one of the hosts said that he always wanted to be just like hank moody, and then he made some "bad decisions" and got there, and he doesn't like it. and duchovny said that every time people come up to him saying "i'm just like hank moody," he says "i'm sorry."

men watch and they want to be just like hank moody and women watch and they want to fuck hank moody so bad, and all of you miss what the source comprehends: that it's an irreparable deficit.

other than that, i feel like what roots that show is that it really isn't all that cynical. not in the way that it could be. and the show believes in hank.

there is a lot of kindness and hope (often false hope) that runs underneath most every relationship and interaction and dynamic in the series and i really really appreciate that about it. it's like in the pilot when hank is being mean and he wants marcy to yell at him and she just says "go home, honey. sleep it off. tomorrow's another day."

there's always a little bit of understanding and grace amongst the crazies and i think there's something really special about that